Students in India’s fiercely competitive examination culture spend years studying for exams. The epidemic, however, had different plans for them, despite their best efforts to study for success.
On the morning of December 10th, more than 500,000 students from around India listened in to a live broadcast of the education minister’s speech, which was simultaneously streamed on Facebook and Twitter. The hashtag #EducationMinisterGoesLive was created in response to students’ fears about impending university admission exams, which have been clouded by the pandemic.
Despite the fact that it was billed as an interactive session, it mostly consisted of two parties talking over each other. Even when the livestream’s comment boxes were swamped with terrified students saying that they were struggling to cope and that examinations must be postponed, the minister commended India’s education system for overcoming pandemic-related obstacles.
Since the original Covid-19-enforced lockdowns prompted the cancellation of all exams in March, campaigns demanding test delays have been a near-permanent presence on Indian social media timelines. The Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) and the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), which evaluate eligibility for engineering and medical courses, were the most important of the delayed tests.
In India, education is a fiercely competitive field, with STEM fields being the most competitive. Only one out of every 50 applicants is accepted into the elite Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). (For comparison, Harvard accepts one out of every 19 students and Oxford accepts one out of every six.) With hundreds of thousands of students applying each year, exams like the JEE and the NEET are meant to screen out a large number of applicants. Losing a couple of points can result in thousands of ranks being dropped.
Students have protested the government’s attempts to reschedule exams, requesting that they be postponed or cancelled entirely (Credit: Alamy)
Students often spend the majority of their adolescent years studying for these tests in order to turn these seemingly impossible odds in their favor. The majority enroll in coaching institutes that specialize in teaching students how to ‘crack’ tests, putting exam preparation ahead of all other activities. It’s all in the hopes of getting into a prestigious college like an IIT and launching a great career. Graduates from the best of these schools can expect to earn roughly $50,000 on average. In a country where the per capita income is barely over $2,000, the prize is deemed well worth the effort.
However, Covid-19, lockdowns, and an uneven migration to online instruction have thrown most of these kids’ traditional exam preparation into disarray this year. During the hour-long discussion with the minister, students complained that poor internet connections and the stilted style of video learning made lectures difficult to follow and doubts impossible to resolve. For many, the ultimate effect was that, while they were ostensibly taught the syllabus, they had learned very little and were dreadfully unprepared for the most important tests of their lives.
By 2015, India’s coaching institutes had grown to be a $4 billion business, operating nearly totally without regulation. These establishments come in different forms and sizes, from major national chains to local mom-and-pop shops serving their immediate communities. In other situations, entire cities’ fortunes are predicated on their reputation as a coaching center hub. The most well-known of them, in Rajasthan’s Kota, receives an estimated 100,000 students each year.